Fit Together: How we hacked together a dream

The “Better Connected” Hackathon was the first step towards one of my dreams: to create a global running event at Axway. My idea was to collect all the data from all the runners through an app that shows—in its entirety—that the distance Axway employees can cover while engaged in running around the world.

This app would integrate and aggregate data, thereby connecting raw providers of data for the user. The app would do this through smartphones using geo-localization. This allows all the users to share live with the Axway community on our internal system where they are running and display that information.

The end game would be for the app to collect data for a specific event and share their colleagues. Thus, enabling us to all feel like we ran together and be supported by the rest of Axway. Better Together!

Dream project

For 45 years, I have loved sports from a distance… from the couch. I am one of those who avoided any kind of sports for years. A few years ago, a friend asked me to help her train for a full marathon. You can imagine my reaction? Me? What are you thinking?

But, after a few glasses of red wine—yes, my Friend is French, I accepted. The reason being that helping friends, colleagues, customers is what I do best.

Fast forward

At a Team dinner, one colleague shared that he wishes to run a half marathon but thought it was impossible for him. I explained that the most difficult part about running such a distance is to make the decision and register.

To get running, everyone needs a friend—so I registered us both for the Phoenix Half Marathon that was happening soon. Eight weeks later he was a half marathon finisher. An amazing accomplishment!

This story started to spread across our team worldwide and soon there were more runs organized with Axway participants across the globe, competing to get the bigger Axway Run event.

I started to think about organizing a very special run for Axway Employees from across the world to be able to run together. A run that would last for 24 hours, covering the globe, starting early morning with our colleagues in Sydney, and ending with our colleagues from California.

Better Connected with AMPLIFY

The objective would be to have at least one Axway Employee running at any time. We will collect the information through our AMPLIFY™ platform, integrate data from all our running apps, and together we will build the most amazing running route that ever been done.

Read more from my Hackathon team member, Abhilash Chavala, to learn how we were able to build the app.

Thanks to this project, my dream of having one Global Axway run will soon come true!
We will be BetterTogether!